Read on for more juicy PlanetSide 2 beta details from Matt Higby himself my New Conglomerate brethren (yes, you Terran and Vanu types can read too). Creative Director Matt Higby dropped by the PlanetSide Universe forums last night to reveal more juicy details about the upcoming closed beta that is expected to begin sometime this month.

Higby posted that the team plans to kick off external technical test hopefully by the end of this week. Following that little spec testing session, the team will be inviting players in by phases, increasing the number each time with priority invites going out to PlanetSide vets and those with priority beta keys.

We will be opening up the test in multiple phases or stages, inviting more and more players for each phase. Our priority invitees are those of you who are PlanetSide vets, and those who have priority beta keys (i.e. keys from the PC Gamer magazines), as well as those who received keys from members of the dev teams or at E3. Just so I'm 100% clear, we're not going to be opening the floodgates by inviting all of the thousands of PlanetSide veterans on day 1, but you are still the highest priority to get invites as we expand the testing circle out.

Higby also pointed out that this will in fact be a beta test and not an over-glorified demo marketing tool like we've seen it used for in more recent online games. So things will break, the servers will probably crash, testing schedules may change and asks that players that get into the beta understand and respect that.

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Stacy "Martuk" Jones was a long-time news editor and community manager for many of our previous game sites, such as Age of Conan. Stacy has since moved on to become a masked super hero, battling demons in another dimension.